


on his knees; on the floor

by riverbanks



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Dreams vs. Reality, Ghosts, Hallucinations, M/M, Memory Loss, Sheith Week 2016, Sheith Week 2016: Flashback/Reality, Sheith Week 2016: Together/Alone, Voltronween 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-27
Updated: 2016-10-27
Packaged: 2018-08-27 07:11:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8392120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riverbanks/pseuds/riverbanks
Summary: There’s a ghost that lives inside Keith, and it’s Shiro’s face everywhere he looks.There’s a ghost in the walls that close around Shiro, and it’s a flash of red in his memory when all else around him is black.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This a rush of three things at once: Sheith Week's Alone and Flashback prompts, Voltronween's Ghost Stories prompt, and this art: http://opaldelight.tumblr.com/post/152228081956/sheith-week-day-2-togetheralone-very-much

There’s a ghost that lives inside Keith, and it’s Shiro’s face everywhere he looks.

It’s in him when he spends his nights awake, lying on his back on the floor, staring at the ceiling looking for answers on the cracks of the tiles above, listening in on radio frequencies that transmit nothing but static and white noise. It’s in him when he awakes in the middle of the afternoon, startled by dreams he can’t remember, and hears that hum in his ears again, that growl that echoes within him but it’s nothing when he runs outside, not even a wildcat prowling in the distance. It’s in him when he rides around in circles, aimlessly chasing this _thing_ that pulls at him, this impulse to ride his bike straight into the face of the nearest mountain, just to watch himself burn.

It’s Shiro’s fingers running through his hair at three in the morning, scratching behind his ears, telling him to rest, at least close his eyes. _You have to sleep, Keith. You can’t stay awake forever_. He could, if he tried, but this is the way it’s always been: Shiro cares, and Keith does.

It’s Shiro standing on his porch when Keith bursts his door open and runs outside looking for that roar in his head, that flash of purple in his nightmares, breathing fast, suddenly scared of he doesn’t even know what. Shiro smiles at him, warm, a mirage dissolving in thin air before his eyes even as Keith feels arms wrapping around him, a gentle kiss on his temple. _Listen_ , Shiro says, and Keith is listening, but he still doesn’t know what for.

It’s Shiro’s hands closing around his, gripping the handles of his lost bike with him, steering his path as Keith loses sight, lips on his neck waking him from a daze; _Now,_ Shiro whispers into his ear, into the edge of his consciousness, and Keith reels away, half a second from crashing.

If he stops to think about voices and visions, Keith knows ghosts aren’t real and he’s losing his mind, but this is still a comfort when everything else around him is silence.

* * *

 

There’s a ghost in the walls that close around Shiro, and it’s a flash of red in his memory when all else around him is black.

The walls around him are too close, too tight for comfort, he’s barely a single man curling into himself, limbs too long, shoulders too wide, taking too much space where there’s none left, but the boy with the red eyes is there with him, still. Always sitting beside him, even when there’s no side to take, always just there wherever he goes.

They move him from one cell to another, from the commons to the solitary, from stark white rooms where they bind him and cut him open, to padded white cells where he bleeds until he scars, and it’s back to solitary again until he’s thrown onto the arena and brought back in half pieces, and still the flash of red follows behind him no matter where.

He’s one more mouth to feed in the commons, and he pushes his food away, leaving more for the others and hoping he can starve himself into taking less space. The lights blink around him and Shiro is back in the mess hall, two voices around him, two laughters he can’t put a name to, but he remembers their colors -he remembers red. Red is the foot that rubs against his under the table, red is the eye that winks at him when no one is looking. Red stands on the other side of the cell, arms crossed and back against the wall, telling him _You owe me a burger when you get out of here,_ and Shiro pulls the food bowl back and eats, because he remembers burgers still, and he needs to eat something if he wants to live through this.

He’s one and four walls, and the rats that nibble at the wound on his arm, or what would be rats if he could see anything in the dark of his cell, if he could tell what kind of pest has three eyes and three tails -but he remembers rats, and here, wherever here is, anything’s worth remembering. The ghost sits beside him, but there’s no room for two, and the head that rests on his shoulder takes him away to somewhere outside, somewhere in the desert, red resting on his shoulder, red kissing the knuckles on each of his fingers - _hey Shiro, do you remember that night?_ He doesn’t, not anymore -he remembers sirens, five times a day, he remembers the pillars on the arena that he’s too tall to hide behind, he remembers how fragile life feels draining from the edge of his sword, but he doesn’t remember the desert anymore.

 _You do remember_ , red tells him, and Shiro closes his eyes and sees him, sees himself -black hair and a smile, uniforms pressed, photographs and a promise, _I’ll wait_.

The ghost knows his name, reminds him of he is. Shiro hardly knows the sound of his own voice anymore, but himself is the one thing he can still keep.

* * *

 

 _Are you real?_ , Keith asks, his voice hoarse, a sound he almost doesn’t recognize as belonging to himself. Out here there’s no one to talk to, and he hasn’t spoken to anyone in so long it starts to feel like talking to ghosts is just the next step, it’s this thing he does now.

Shiro beams at him from across the small room, sitting cross legged on the floor, arms propped on the makeshift table, chin on his hand. He’s a blur shifting in and out of focus, like a movie Keith projects on the walls, the film stained and snapped in places.

_Do you want me to be?_

Keith sighs deep when Shiro’s hand closes around his, touching him where he needs, guiding his pleasure where there’s none to be found. He lies back on the cold floor and lets the feeling wash over him, Shiro’s lips on his collarbone, empty words whispered into his neck, one hand that digs into his side, one hand that wraps around him and grips tight, making Keith call his name into the night. He comes with no release, no relief from the weight on his chest that’s not Shiro’s body pressing into his, it’s just dust and silence again.

The arms that wrap around him aren’t real, and neither is the chest Keith hides his face into, neither is the hand that runs through his hair, or the voice that hums on his ear, lulling him to a sleep that won’t come. It’s the ghost that haunts him, keeps him company when there’s nowhere else he could be, keeps him listening even though more and more Keith just wants to go to sleep one night and awake in the morning to find there’s nothing out there after all.

 _I’m still out there_ , Shiro says, lips brushing his, and it’s cruel, it’s the most vicious thing Shiro could do to him these days -to keep giving him hope when Keith has nothing else to cling to.

 _You’re not alone_ , Shiro tells him, and Keith  pushes him back, struggles free shaking his head clean, the arms around him dissolving into mist, the warmth of Shiro’s skin against his leaving him like a splash of cold water that drips from all over him.

“Yes I am,” he says to no one, and the empty room has no answers back for Keith when he stalks to the board and stares at the answers he still can’t quite read, to questions he still doesn’t know how to ask.

He’s alone, but he’s still waiting. He still just doesn't know what for.

* * *

 

 _You’re not real_ , Shiro says to the red light flickering in and out of the corner of his eye.

It settles down and takes shape before him, arms and legs and teeth, a human -like him?- with red eyes and a smile he thinks he remembers, thinks he _could_ remember.

 _No_ , the ghost of red says, _But you are._

Shiro takes inventory of the things he remembers: a keychain and numbers on the side of an engine, a stack of books on his nighstand, badges sewed onto his uniform, a boy named Matthew and someone else he can't name, his mother and brother, and their names are there, but their faces come and go. A name for himself -Champion?

 _Shiro_ , the ghost reminds him, and he knows that’s not all of it, but it’s enough to hold onto.

Sometimes it’s been days, or years since he last saw anyone, last heard someone’s voice, so Shiro imagines a ghost for himself: he’s the right height, has the right hair, only Shiro doesn’t know right for what -for _whom_ \- only that it feels right for him. He closes his eyes and dreams, and he’s back somewhere bright, somewhere where there’s sun and a porch, and he sits there with someone on his side, leaning onto him, a hand entwined with his. And he laughs. He remembers laughter, and lips on his cheek, small kisses at the corner of his mouth.

When he opens his eyes and he’s back in his cell, Shiro still feels the leaning of a body against his, still feels fingers running along the back of his hand, still feels the touch of lips brushing over his, kissing away the bruises and cuts. The ghost of red kneels in front of him, reaches to touch his cheek, leans in to kiss the bridge of his nose, numbing the constant bite of the gash healing across his face. It leaves soft pecks on his mouth, whispering words Shiro can’t understand, but he remembers the sound and it eases the racing in his chest.

 _Who are you?_ , the ghost asks him, and Shiro pulls all the air from his lungs and forces himself to speak, to use his throat and his voice before he loses them too, scrambles together the pieces he remembers to give himself a name, a rank, a unit, a class. More and more things slip him by and it gets harder to remember, but Shiro just keeps repeating them, willing them to stay.

The ghost smiles one last time and fades away, red dust turning into nothing as the walls of his cell close in on him again, and Shiro lets himself slump against the wall, slipping between what’s now and what’s then in the absence of sleep. His fingers trace letters on the dust-covered floor, and when he looks down Shiro fears he’s starting to forget even this, but even if he can’t tell what it says, he remembers the shapes of the word that forms itself from the tips of his fingers, from somewhere inside his heart:

_Keith_

His ghosts have names, and it’s all Shiro can do to make himself remember.

* * *

 

There’s a halt in his step when Keith walks out of the house and sees Shiro standing there. He walks up to Shiro, half expecting him to blur out, to shift and disappear, for this whole thing to be an elaborate illusion of his mind finally splitting, finally losing all ties to reality.

But Shiro’s still there when he steps up to him, and if not for the way Shiro looks at him like he's seeing a ghost too, like he’s having a vision of something that’s not quite there, this seems real enough.

 _It’s good to have you back_ , is all he can find in himself to say, and the way Shiro’s eyes change when he recognizes who Keith is, accepts that he’s real, is enough to make Keith almost lose his breath. It's enough to pull out of Keith the ghost that’s been haunting him from the inside.

The hum still calls out to him from somewhere even now, but Keith is starting to see where the dots connect, and if that means he’s lost his mind and this is no longer reality, then to have Shiro back is a least a version of it he’s willing to take.

* * *

 

“Keith,” Shiro says, lips on his neck.

“Keith,” he says, from the other side of the room.

“Keith,” he says, over the channel on their lions.

Keith looks at him like _What_ , and waits for the rest, but that’s all there is to it.

There are things Shiro still needs to remember, and things he still wants to forget, but Keith’s name just _is_ -the flash of red in his mind, the ghost that kept him awake through hazes of black that start to blur at the edge of his mind like a long, heavy dream.

“Nothing,” Shiro says with a smile, and watches as Keith takes off again. This is a piece of him he never lost, in the end.


End file.
